Posted ImageTravis Wood’s hair is still growing out after he shaved his head for the flick “Zombie Strippers.”

Five W’s and an H:

By TIM ENGLEThe Kansas City Star

Judging from the show he’s on — “I Wanna Be a Soap Star” — Travis Wood apparently wants to be a soap star.

Well, Travis, not that you asked us, but considering your …

… Carpentry experience (and last name), couldn’t you be the next hunky TV carpenter, a la Ty Pennington?

… Time on an Alaskan fishing boat, couldn’t you be the next star of “Deadliest Catch”?

… Underwear modeling, couldn’t you be the next Marky Mark?

Oh, well. You have “daytime drama” experience, too, so we suppose you’re qualified to be a soap star.

Wood, 29, is a country boy originally from these parts — near Pomona, Kan., which is near Ottawa, down I-35 from Olathe. After his parents split when he was 9, he zigzagged around the country with his dad. He graduated from high school in Sheridan, Wyo.

He started modeling, then met the owners of the School for Film and Television, an acting conservatory in New York. So he moved there at 20.

The Big Apple is still his home, although he has also done time in Los Angeles. Along the way he has had small parts on “All My Children” — as a bartender at Sounds of Salsa, which figured in Kelly Ripa and Mark Consuelos’ story line back in the day — and “As the World Turns.”

Wood did a print campaign for 2(x)ist, your basic “standing there with my underwear on” thing. “I had to eat tuna for a week to get the job,” he says.

And he has a couple of movies on his résumé. One is a 2006 slasher called “The Slaughter,” in which Wood plays a cocky jock who “gets killed three-quarters of the way through and comes back as a zombie.”

Then there’s “Zombie Strippers,” a not-yet-out flick featuring porn star Jenna Jameson and Robert Englund (aka Freddy Krueger). The movie’s makers thought Wood was too pretty to play a bad guy, so he shaved his head and grew a “nasty goatee.”

He did not get to do a sex scene with Jameson, “no matter how much money I’d give them.”

Oh, and he’s married. Wife Amy is a physical therapist.

Wood writes on his MySpace page (myspace.com/traviskevinwood) that “Soap Star” is looking for likability, sexiness, “popping on screen” and that indefinable something. “I’ll just flex a lot!”

•••

WHO do you run lines with?

My wife. The No. 1 thing is, she’s supportive. It doesn’t matter what time of night I get a script or if it’s a last-minute audition. At first she wasn’t that great. She was just, like, reading a newspaper: “Hi-Travis-how-are-you.” But over time, she’s gotten great. She’s a great actress now.

WHAT would you be better at: a drunken bar scene or a striptease scene? Both are challenges on “Soap Star.”

Striptease. I’m just very open, I’ll put it that way (laughs). I like to dance.

WHEN have you felt like you were living a soap opera?

When I first moved to New York to start acting school. I knew no one the first couple of weeks. You get in there and meet a couple of women and start dating them. And it becomes a soap opera — you’re dating an actress. It’s drama, drama, drama. One actor in the family is plenty.

WHERE is someplace back here you miss?

I miss Pomona Lake. I can remember going out there a lot during the summer with my father. He had an old boat. We’d go out fishing and just hang out. And I miss the country roads: driving on a dirt road and not seeing anybody for miles.

WHY is (fill in the blank) your favorite TV show?

I’m almost embarrassed to say this, but it’s “The O.C.” I was so addicted to it the first season. Maybe I have something in common with the part Benjamin McKenzie played, the down-and-out loner from the wrong side of the tracks. And the next one would be “24.”

HOW did you know you wanted to be an actor?

My first taste of it was when I was with my father moving around a lot. I felt like at each new school, I had to act to make friends. I guess it gave me the confidence to pursue an acting career.

‘I WANNA BE A SOAP STAR’ The series’ fourth season premieres at 7 p.m. Tuesday on Soapnet. Travis Wood and nine other hopefuls compete in various acting challenges — and try to avoid being “killed off.” A three-judge panel and, for the first time, viewers will decide the winner, who lands a 13-week role on NBC’s “Days of Our Lives.”